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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28495962">Lovers' Quarrel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric'>hopeless_eccentric</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Penumbra Podcast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Robin Hood Fusion, F/F, Fluff, Friar Tuck Jet Sikuliaq, Kissing, Maid Marian Vespa Ilkay, Reunions, Robin Hood Buddy Aurinko, accidentally battling your partner winter soldier style, based off one specific ballad where maid marian kicks a lot of ass, im so gay, sword fights, the title is a pun no worries, theres so much just. nice kissing in this</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:21:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,054</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28495962</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Vespa and Buddy had their plans to leave, perhaps to seek out one of those communities of outlaws who disliked the king as much as they did. The plan seemed airtight, but then again, all plans seem airtight until they spring a leak. In a matter of hours or days or seconds that Vespa hadn’t been able to discern past the blur of it all, there had been a conviction of treason and an exile that had managed to separate the two of them.</p><p>Even if she herself hadn’t been convicted, Vespa knew better than to stay.</p><p>aka anne read an old ballad where maid marian kicks a bunch of ass and wrote an au about it</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lovers' Quarrel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for those interested this is based on Child Ballad 150: Robin Hood and Maid Marian but like. there is 0 need to know that for the story i read the ballad after i wrote it lmao i just heard a summary somewhere and went VESBUD anyway</p><p>Content warnings for sword fight, allusions to injury, threats of death/injury, blood mention</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Vespa wasn’t exactly the type of lady to sit around and wait to get exiled, but with the way the teeth of the brambled forest threatened to sink into her from all sides, she almost wished she had waited a few days before departing the court.</p><p>As stuffy and inhospitable as the company of nobles had been, she would take a ladyship if it meant a roof over her head. She wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth just because that gift horse was covered in a few too many layers of social expectations for her liking. Sherwood Forest snarled around the outskirts of Nottingham and the high, stone walls of the castle were about as far as one could get from it.</p><p>She and Buddy had their plans to leave, perhaps to seek out one of those communities of outlaws who disliked the king as much as they did. The plan seemed airtight, but then again, all plans seem airtight until they spring a leak. In a matter of hours or days or seconds that Vespa hadn’t been able to discern past the blur of it all, there had been a conviction of treason and an exile that had managed to separate the two of them.</p><p>Even if she herself hadn’t been convicted, Vespa knew better than to stay.</p><p>Buddy had to be somewhere within the dark and twisting paths of the forest, each another branching, identical turn in that unmapped maze. Vespa didn’t know if she was moving or hiding or even alive, but with hours upon hours of sword-cleaved foliage in her wake, she certainly knew she couldn’t turn around. As much as it appeared like a cursed wood pulled from a children’s story, the forest wasn’t infinite.</p><p>Maybe her search would take hours. Maybe it would take days. Maybe it would take the rest of her life. If it was successful, Vespa was sure it would have been worth it.</p><p>The image of Buddy glowed in her mind like the promise of sunrise at the end of a soot-dark night. Every ache in her bramble-scarred arms would be worth it when she could wrap them around Buddy once more. The trouble of stealing the clothes of a page and attempting to disguise herself would pale once she had a chance to hear Buddy’s voice again when she would laugh and ask how Vespa had managed to sneak away from the castle when their first plan had been foiled.</p><p>However, Vespa still had to claw tooth and nail through the forest before she could see the first streak of dawn cutting through the inky blackness.</p><p>Even if her shoulder burned, she heaved her arm aloft to shear through the next wall of thorns when her path came to a dead, overgrown end. It took far too many hacks than it should have, and she couldn’t help but swear. If she found herself in combat against one of the less merry bands of criminals who made Sherwood Forest their home, she might just need to get creative with one of her knives.</p><p>She tried to push the worry down as she stalked forward, but the creeping sensation slithered up her spine regardless. Vespa couldn’t tell if the prickling in her shoulders was borne of exertion or the strange, cold sensation that every rustle of a bird fluttering along the leaves of the forest floor was another footstep. Her every pace forward seemed to increase tenfold in volume, and any tapping that could have been a woodpecker or the scrabbling of a squirrel up a tree tore through the air like a gunshot.</p><p>Vespa tried to take a deep breath, but she couldn’t help but tighten her grip on her sword’s handle.</p><p>Maybe the rustling was just from the forest animals. Maybe the hiss of breath was just from the wind. Maybe the second set of footsteps coming up closer and closer behind her was just an echo.</p><p>Vespa turned and drew, knowing well it was better to be paranoid than dead. For once, it seemed this philosophy paid off when she found herself face to shadowed face with a figure in an emerald hood. A quick glance up and down revealed a hand already tight around the grip of a sword and a stance preparing to strike.</p><p>She didn’t need to be familiar with the forest to know exactly what kind of person she had come across. She had been careful enough not to dress wealthy, but she supposed that didn’t matter to the kind of thief who stalked the corners of the forest with their face hidden and their sword so plainly drawn. If the thief didn’t pose any threat, they would have said something, rather than merely staring at her with that great, empty void where a creeping shadow took the place of eyes.</p><p>“Shit,” Vespa groaned, not loud enough for her accoster to hear.</p><p>With her opponent’s knees already bending and their second hand beginning to edge towards their sword, Vespa knew better than to let them get the first strike in. She lunged.</p><p>The sound of their blades first colliding could have been a scream. Sparks erupted like stars from the distant, uncaring sky above, and for just a moment, Vespa nearly made out the thief’s face in the strange, orange light. However, the fire dissipated as soon as it came, leaving her eyes squinting against the cold, gray light of the moon as she threw the stranger’s blade off of her own.</p><p>The swords clanged again and again and again, as if every slash of metal on metal was a cue to pick up the pace of their shuffling feet and quieted growls of exertion. The stranger’s blade blazed through the night air as if rending it in twain with every swing. It flashed an unearthly silver, and even as many feet away as Vespa tried to keep it, she could tell it was as sharp as a hawk’s talons.</p><p>If she wanted to live, she couldn’t let the thief win. If she wanted to ever see Buddy again, she was going to have to force down the ache in her arms and grit her teeth and power through against an opponent who was trained just as well as she.</p><p>Sparks shuddered through the air, and Vespa caught a glimpse of Buddy’s hair in her mind’s eye. She slammed the sword down with all her might, catching a piece of the stranger’s cloak in her slice. The fabric ripped, and Vespa was struck by the memory of teaching Buddy how to sew a patch onto a pair of her pants when she tore them on one of their rides through the countryside. Another clang of her blade sent the stranger tumbling backwards into a patch of moonlight nearly as potent as the sun, though Vespa remembered well that neither were as bright as Buddy Aurinko’s smile.</p><p>The stranger did their best to return Vespa’s strikes, but familiar thoughts had made something warm and bright rear its head in her chest. That sensation quieted the screaming of her arms and legs and shoulders and hushed the thought that she would likely ache for days after such an ordeal. Vespa didn’t care. She couldn’t care. The hooded attacker stood between her and Buddy Aurinko, and would have to be dealt with in the same way as the brambles. If she couldn’t find a path around them, she would have to go through.</p><p>“Wait!” The stranger cried. “I don’t have anything to steal.”</p><p>Vespa scoffed, though it was covered by the sound of their blades colliding again.</p><p>“I’m not trying to threaten you,” the thief pressed, words straining with another slash of their sword, which seemed to take most of the energy they had left. “I thought you were going to threaten me.”</p><p>“Like hell you were,” Vespa spat, returning the blows faster and faster until the stranger could not keep up pace, their knees buckling until they toppled back into a mossen patch of ground, chest heaving somewhere beneath their tattered cloak. Vespa took a step forward and pressed the blunt tip of her sword just above the stranger’s heart. “I don’t wanna kill you, but I’ve lost something really goddamned important and if you’re gonna get in my way—”</p><p>“Vespa?”</p><p>Vespa’s sword hit the ground at her opponent’s side. Her knees followed suit.</p><p>“Oh, darling, I thought I’d never see you again,” Buddy Aurinko breathed, her voice shaking with an emotion that could have been anything. Vespa couldn’t tell, for Buddy had already flung herself across the patch of grass to tackle her into a hug. “I must say, your disguise was quite good.”</p><p>“Buddy?” Vespa sputtered, though with the moonlight kind enough to shine through a gap in the trees overhead, her vision confirmed what her mind hadn’t been hopeful enough to believe.</p><p>Buddy smiled from above, her hair tucked away into a frizzy bun at the back of her head, all but ruined by the hood she had clearly donned as a disguise. A streak of dirt from some point in their fight had sputtered across her forehead, only to be smeared by sweat. Vespa thought she might have been the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.</p><p>Vespa would have stared at her forever, but Buddy kissed her before she got the opportunity. She had to say, she much preferred the alternative. Buddy’s lips were soft and gentle and the pressure of their chests pressed together, even if both clad in strangers’ clothes and heaving with an accidental fight, was sweet and familiar. An eternity could have passed then, with the soft bed of grass to her back and Buddy Aurinko above her, worshipping at her lips like a holy woman at an altar.</p><p>When Buddy finally pulled away, it seemed she could not do so for long, for she smiled and laughed and kissed Vespa again. Vespa certainly wasn’t going to complain.</p><p>“Sorry for trying to stab you, Bud,” Vespa chuckled once Buddy gave her a moment to breathe.</p><p>“Apology accepted and returned in kind,” Buddy smiled. “Though that sword was terribly dull, darling.”</p><p>“I had a backup knife.”</p><p>“My resourceful Vespa,” Buddy returned with a kiss to Vespa’s forehead.</p><p>Buddy rolled away enough to fix her cloak and find a tree to lean on, chest still heaving a little too hard to consider standing just yet. Vespa couldn’t blame her. As much as she wanted to prolong their contact, the night was a little too warm and she was a little too exhausted to do anything more than stretch out against the grass and just breathe.</p><p>“I missed you more than I can say, darling, but I must ask,” Buddy began after a moment, pausing for a breath. “What are you doing in Sherwood Forest?”</p><p>“Looking for you,” Vespa returned simply.</p><p>“Oh, Vespa,” Buddy breathed. “We were planning to break you out ourselves.”</p><p>“We?”</p><p>Buddy opened her mouth to answer, but the crashing of footsteps as someone stumbled into the clearing was all the reply Vespa needed.</p><p>The new stranger had no sword, but rather, a brown robe, tied with a belt that held all manners of hammers and nails in the hand-sewn pockets. Vespa raised her head just enough to squint at him.</p><p>“Friar Sikuliaq?” She sputtered. “You were exiled years ago.”</p><p>“Call me Jet, please,” he nodded in return. “Buddy, are you injured? I heard sounds of fighting.”</p><p>Buddy smiled breathlessly.</p><p>“I’m doing just fine,” she returned. “I might have found us a new recruit. Vespa, this is Jet. He found me when I was first exiled and led me in the direction of what our old companions might call a band of criminals, though I think it might be better to refer to it as a community of sorts.”</p><p>“Is this some kind of job offer?” Vespa snorted, though it came out as more of a groan as she used a nearby branch to help drag her to her feet. She offered a hand for Buddy as well, who took it gladly.</p><p>“I suppose you could call it that,” Buddy grinned, and for the first time all evening, Vespa didn’t regret her lack of a torch, for that expression was bright enough to make the sun tremble.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>man. i love women</p><p>Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill steal your gf</p><p>Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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